


After Elimination Dance (an intermission)

by livrelibre



Series: After Elimination Dance (an intermission) [1]
Category: Elimination Dance - Michael Ondaatje
Genre: F/F, F/M, Gen, M/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-10
Updated: 2010-12-10
Packaged: 2017-10-14 07:08:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,994
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/146708
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/livrelibre/pseuds/livrelibre
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Multifandom drabble explosion for thingswithwings' birthday based on Elimination Dance, a poem by Michael Ondaatje. The versions I found online seems to have slightly different verses included so I combined what I could find. For more info see <a href="http://livfic.dreamwidth.org/23920.html">Master Post: After Elimination Dance (an intermission)</a></p><p>Ratings: Gen to Adult </p><p>Content notes: IDEK? I tried to put some on the individual drabbles.</p><p>ETA: Read them all at once here or use the series link to read individual drabbles. All drabble titles from poem.</p>
            </blockquote>





	After Elimination Dance (an intermission)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [thingswithwings](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thingswithwings/gifts).



**Those who are allergic to the sea (SGA, John/Rodney)**

Of his myriad allergies and ailments, one Rodney had grown out of was his reaction to salt water. When he was small, trips to the sea had left him with swimmer’s itch and a hatred of family vacations to places as desolate and stormy as his parents marriage. By the time he reached Atlantis, his reaction had faded through knowledge of treatment (though the jumper crash did not help his fear). His allergy to emotional attachment took a lot longer but as with the jumper rescue, John Sheppard had a hand in his getting over it and growing to love both him and the sea.

**Those who have resisted depravity (Watchmen, Rorschach/Dan UST)**

Rorschach had sometimes wished for a cleansing fire, something to sweep away the thieves and whores and gluttons and evil that plagued the streets. He had done as much as he could to stomp out the seething underbelly of the city, to wash the stink and grime of the unwashed and unsalvageable from the world. No matter what he did, the stain persisted and worse, he felt sometimes the sin soaking into his veins, burning there, irreducible, irredeemable, as he gazed at the back of Dan's neck and turned away.

**Men who shave off beards in stages, pausing to take photographs (Mythbusters, Adam/Jamie, shaving)**

Adam decided to test the myth that shaving or not shaving a beard made it grow thicker and faster. It took forever and for the final leg, he refused to cut it until it was an almost ZZ-top-like monstrosity, this weird ginger Rip van Winkle thing that made him look like a homeless person. He resisted all threats from the network (of which there were few since the suits were all used to him by now and it was great for the ratings) but what finally got him was Jamie threatening to cut him off because he got tired of the beard burn on the insides of his thighs. But they did the myth (busted) and Adam saved all the photos of the shaving because it turned out that made Jamie almost as hot as the feel of Jamie’s thighs against his freshly shaved skin made him.

**American rock stars who wear Toronto Maple Leaf hockey sweaters (Hedwig and the Angry Inch, gen)**

The tribute to the Stanley Cup had been Hedwig’s idea for their tour through the casinos and hotels of Niagara Falls but none of the patrons of those fine establishments seemed to know quite what to do with a glitter-dusted Toronto Maple Leafs jersey paired with assless chaps. Their loss, really.

**Those who (while visiting a foreign country) have lost the end of a Q-tip in their ear and have been unable to explain their problem (Farscape, gen)**

John thought the dentic took some getting used to but that was before he lost the qu’alup in his ear on Dendraaedi 5. At this point he was familiar enough with having alien things in his body that it didn’t freak him out totally (and that was one for the books, kids; the day you became blase about having earwax-eating worms running around in your skull was the day you knew you had pretty much gotten over the culture shock). But it threw off his balance and seemed to be heading for the nasal cavity, and from there it was just a hop skip and jump to his brain; it was already crowded and bruised enough in there already. What could he say, he had a thing about his brain and could you blame him? The biggest problem though was that somehow the qu’alup was interfering with the translator microbes or at least the interface the translator microbes used between his ears and his brains. (Harvey threw up an image of a silent film heroine tied to the train tracks by a mustache-twirling worm and John shook his head extra hard). Now everything the, he supposed they were doctors, or any of the crew from Moya said came across garbled, or, he guessed, clear for once. And they couldn’t understand him for whatever reason (not that they caught half the things he said normally anyway so that wasn’t much new but it did turn into the worst game of charades ever, even more annoying when Rygel wouldn’t stop laughing at him). With the guys, it didn’t matter though in the end, he found. He didn’t need translator microbes to understand D’argo’s eye roll and friendly arm punch, to see that Chiana was obviously frelling with him, to understand the concern behind the reserve and impatience with human weakness in Aeryn’s face. He didn’t need words to know what his found family was telling him. And if getting a sentient Q-tip stuck in his ear was the worse that happened in this weeken, then that was OK by him.

**Gentlemen who have placed a microphone beside a naked woman's stomach after lunch and later, after slowing down the sound considerably, have sold these noises on the open market as whale songs (Hustle, gen)**

Before Ash started the flop, before their crew, before everything, he started hustling CDs of nature sounds that were actually Angie’s stomach noises slowed down. He’d hit on the trick while he was trying to be the next Brian Eno. He’d had a mullet and a roomful of recording equipment he’d cobbled together out of cheap electronics and castoffs from production studios. He’d thought he could tune the world to his design but found out that the recording industry was “a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There's also a negative side."* The movie industry where he’d spent a backbreaking time working for low-budget directors with more ego than vision or talent, was much the same. But then he’d found that there were other ways to conduct the world to his liking, to set the stage for his own ambitions, to take the self-important little men who thought they ran the world and make them dance to his own tune. In the world of the con, he was the producer par excellence.

*Hunter Thompson

**All actors and poets who spit into the first row while they perform (Cradle Will Rock, gen)**

Olive didn’t mean to spray the folks sitting near her in the front row but by the end of the play, she’d graduated from that first tentative quaver when she stood up, against the rules, and began to sing. Now her lines were flying from her lips like bullets in her own personal war. Even that force could barely contain the energy she felt. There were no line cues, no sets, no Adair to look to and that made it all better; that made it click for her all of a sudden in a way it never had before during rehearsals. Here they were doing it, bringing the play to life, one line and note at a time out of thin air with nothing but the force of their belief and the audience’s. She could feel everyone--Marc, Aldo and all the rest--in it with her, committed. The words were more than just lines now; it was their careers on the line, their hearts. And the audience was in it with them, standing up against the odds, rooting for them in what they were doing against all the fat cats and the bureaucrats who thought they could be shut down and bought and silenced with the label of Communist and the threat of starvation. She’d never felt anything like it and she thought she would explode from joy when the cheering started. They’d done it and no matter what happened next, whether she never had another role and was blacklisted, whether she had to sleep in the back of the theater and sing on the street again, whether she never saw Adair, she knew this was what she was meant for.

**Anyone who has mistaken a flasher’s penis for a loaf of bread while cycling through France (Bend it Like Beckham, Jess/Jules, non-con)**

The team had been in Paris for a match and Jess and Jules decided to stay a bit longer for a holiday. Jules got it into her head that they should do a bike tour of Paris and environs, just them. They would keep in shape during the off-season, see a bit of France. Jess knew, though it was unspoken, that it would also distract them from their recent breakups and maybe (she hoped) give them a chance to see where they stood with each other without the watchful eyes of their parents. Jess had never thought she would see the City of Lights on her own, much less touring with Jules, and it was hard not to have expectations about the romantic nature of the city. However, it was more hard cycling than holding hands on on bridges, more hostel beds than B&B lounging, more negotiating about museums than canoodling on the Pont Neuf. The topper came with the flasher they ran across in the Marais. He stepped out of an alleyway as they were leaving a nightclub, all cliched overcoat and wrinkly bits. Jess didn’t know what came over her in the moment but she grabbed Jules’ hand and yelled.

“Is that a baguette? A demi-baguette? And look, it’s all uncooked!” The Jess Bhamra who would have collapsed in mortification was gone. With Jules beside her in a spangly top, she felt invincible, even more so when Jules clapped a hand over her mouth and laughed until she nearly hurled and the flasher closed his coat in confusion and ran away. They leaned against a wall, laughing still, Jules warm all along her side in the fresh spring air and Jess thought maybe it didn’t have to be all Parisian romance. This right here, Jules side by side with her, laughing, working their bodies hard at something they loved and with her all the way, that was all she needed.

**Men who fear to use an electric lawn-mower feeling they could drowse off and be dragged by it into a swimming pool (Animaniacs, Pinky & the Brain, gen)**

“They have left this electric lawnmower right here. Pinky, are you pondering what I’m pondering?”

“I think so Brain. But what would happen if we fell asleep and the lawnmower dragged us into the pool?”

“No, you fool! With the electricity generated by modifying the mower, we can get the flux capacitor up to 88, change history and rule the world!”

**Any dinner guest who has consumed the host’s missing contact lens along with the dessert (Dead Zone, Johnny/Bruce)**

To be fair, Johnny wasn’t expecting a vision while eating Bruce’s creme brulee (though it was so good you sometimes would swear you were seeing things), but then who expected to eat their host’s missing contact lens? One minute it was all caramelized goodness and the next, he was treated to visions of himself that were overlaid with a pleasure that was almost as sinful as the custard. Johnny got quick flashes of the sight of his hand on his cane, the feel of his biceps as Bruce steadied him, a drop of sweat running down his neck as he did exercises, his mouth speaking, the look in his eyes as he had a vision. And all of it was overlaid with affection, desire, worry, love. There was nothing like seeing yourself from the outside, seeing what was behind the steady and constant regard he’d come to cherish, to need. He came to to Bruce beside him at the dinner table, clutching his arm and hanging on with that familiar expression as Johnny shook off the disorientation. Just as usual but now Johnny knew what lay beyond. For a moment, he flashed on how his own face usually looked to Bruce from this position and wondered if that familiar expression was at all overlaid with his dawning wonder and heat.

“Johnny, you all right, man? What happened? At first, I thought you were choking but then you just zoned out.”

Johnny blinked at him for a moment and then put his finger to his tongue. He could see, now, the way Bruce’s eyes tracked his finger and the minute swallow he hid so well as Johnny slipped a finger into his own mouth and fished further back, making sure to suck lightly as he removed it. Just to remove the dessert and all, you know. Bruce’s eyes went dark.

“I found your contact lens. And why don’t we finish dessert on the couch. Or upstairs.”

**  
Any person who has had the following dream. You are in a subway station of a major city. At the far end you see a coffee machine. You put in two coins. The Holy Grail drops down. Then blood pours into the chalice. (X-Files, gen)**

Scully had the dream over and over. Even the first time she could instantly tell it was a dream since there were never any coffee machines in the Metro station; it'd be like finding a cigarette machine somewhere. It was always this detail that left her baffled, never the chalice of blood, because after all, she had seen weirder things. And if course, salvation would be engineered, of course it would descend from some machine that had no business with it, would be dispensed from an automatic and unknown and improbable place in the underground reaches of a shadowy city.

**Any person who has lost a urine sample in the mail (Bloomsbury RPF, Vita/Virginia, watersports)**

Excerpt from lost letter from Virginia Woolf to Vita Sackville-West

“My darling,

I hope this letter finds you well. It has been too long that you have been away. I miss you more than I can say, the warmth of your regard, the press of your hand. I find all that I wish to say floods up in me, retreats and advances like the waves. I can only send you the traces of my feeling’s passage and this small token, the water of my life, as a marker of what I hold for you, of the wellspring that awaits when you return and I can shower you with my love. . .

  
 **All those belle-lettrists who feel that should have been 'an urine sample'** **(Bloomsbury RPF, Vita/Virginia, watersports)**

From Vita and Virginia: A Biography (DeSalvo, 2012)

There has been much discussion of this lost fragment of letter from Woolf to Sackville-West, especially given the wide speculation on their love life. Barton, in her essay “The Waves: the Queer Lightness of Being Vita and Virginia,” contends that “the reference to ‘water of life’ indicates the practice of urolgania. A study of the package, vial and fragment of the letter found in a disued post box in Wiltshire, indicates that it once contained a [sic] urine sample, making the meaning of a later passage indicating that Woolf intended to ‘shower her with her love’ more than metaphorical.”

**Any person who has noticed and then become obsessed with the fly crawling over Joan Fontaine’s blouse during a key emotional scene in September Affair (Teknolust, Ruby, bob)**

Ruby had seen September Affair a thousand times, played out against her eyelids in her sleep: the whirlwind romance; the sudden disaster; the chance at a new start; the conventional end. Now that she was part of the daylight world, now that she and her sisters could self-replicate in one way or another, now that she was caught here in this house with Sandy and their new child, watching old movies the regular way--on TV, not projected into her dreams--she found herself caught by small details: the fly on Joan Fontaine’s blouse, not the words about May-December romance. The dialogue about being together forever dissolved, so much analog code, not a key to mating, and the happily ever after fell apart. She thought back sometimes to her days with her sisters, dancing to their own tune and hoping to make their mother, their sister, their creator happy. Ruby wondered if humanity made this daylight life any easier for Rosetta, if it was her android (clone) dreams that made her long for a connection, a screen and the taste of semen from other men.

**Anyone who has had to step into an elevator with all of the Irish Rovers (Canadian Actor RPF (**  
 **Rick Mercer & the Irish Rovers)**  
 **, gen)**

Rick had no idea how he ended up in an elevator with the Irish Rovers after the awards show but “Wasn’t That a Party” certainly was not an exaggeration.

**Those who have filled in a bilingual and confidential pig survey from Statistics Canada. (Une enquệte sur les porcs, strictement confidentielle) (Due South, Fraser/RayK)**

“A pig survey Fraser? Really?”

“Well, we are well out of the proper area for proper porcine cultivation but it behooves the local extension to do a complete survey.”

“We’re in a shack in Canada, Fraser. I know Canadian bacon is important and all but the only pig we’re gonna see is me and maybe you.”

“Ray, I hardly think an American eupehmism--”

“Fraser, will you shut up about the survey? I got your euphe--a little pork for your ass right here.”

“Ray!” Fraser was always cute when he blushed like that and he put up no objections to sausage of the non-survey kind either.

**  
Those who have written to the age old brotherhood of Rosicrucians for a free copy of their book 'The Mastery of Life' in order to release the inner consciousness and to experience (in the privacy of the home) momentary flights of consciousness (Doctor Who, gen)**

The Doctor had made a habit of studying the various Earth systems’ beliefs for fun (and also to keep an eye on things; it was amazing how many deposed alien leaders and rebels started off by founding their own spiritual system on Earth and sooner warned was sooner stopped in case of yet another takeover attempt). The Rosicrucians were one of his favorites; for as much as they got wrong, he loved the striving inherent in the system. Human beings were always reaching for understanding, reaching for something beyond themselves, for the unimaginable. And while their theories were sometimes laughable and much farther off than they ever knew, you had to admire that spirit.

**Those who have accidentally stapled themselves (Psych, gen)**

”C’mon Lassie. This is a dangerous mission. We might need a paintball gun.”

“Look at my face and see if you can psychically divine what I think of that.”

“You’re thinking you shouldn’t have had that burrito at lunch? No? Just me then. Throwing off the mojo.”

“Amongst other things,” Gus muttered.

“I’m thinking absolutely not.” Lassiter scowled even deeper than usual. “You’re not even licensed to carry and why are we even discussing this? You don’t even like guns anyway.”

“I’ve always felt they had a certain, certain uh, you know, what’s that French thing. Noli me tangere.”

“You mean je ne sais quoi Shawn”

“I don’t know! What? Really? I’ve heard it both ways. C’mon Lassie, at least give me something. You don’t have to give Gus one either.”

“Why not me, Shawn? I’m better at hand-eye coordination that you are. I was asteroids champ for three years running.”

”That was when we were fourteen. And don’t be the lesser James brother, Gus. Hands up if you’ve accidentally stapled yourself.”

“That happened once Shawn and that was because you jostled my arm.”

“No one is getting a paintball gun!” Lassiter bellowed.

“A pony? No? Too much too soon?”

**Anyone who has been penetrated by a mountie (Due South, Fraser/Ray K)**

Ray, when he thought about fucking Fraser, had thought about fucking Fraser. Nothing had prepared him for how much he loved--no, craved--being held down and taken by him, all that prim-and-proper Mountie cool just bam, gone. It was like being attacked by a wild animal, like Fraser saved up all his violence for fucking, never asking just taking and taking. He was an avalanche, a tsunami breaking and breaking, a force of nature at his back and all Ray had to do was surrender, surrender, surrender. Everything.

**Any university professor who has danced with a life-sized cardboard cut-out of Jean Genet (Canadian Actor RPF, Rick Mercer &/ David Suzuki)**

After Rick had had him thrown into a freezing lake for climate change publicity, David and Rick struck up a fast friendship and an even faster flirtation. It was like they had known each other forever. They shared the same quirky sense of humor and politics and Rick hoped he looked as good and was as passionate in his seventies. They invited each other to their charity events, sent each other quick texts, followed each on Twitter, caught up whenever their paths crossed. They took to sending each other little presents. David would quote bits of the Rick Mercer Report in his interviews. Rick did the science animation and sent him a copy. Rick also sent him a lifesize cardboard cutout of Jean Genet after after David mentioned he was reading a biography about Genet’s activism as well his poems and plays. David sent him back a copy of the biography. The YouTube video he posted of himself dancing with the cutout was just a bonus.

David Suzuki (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Suzuki) and Rick Mercer (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rick_mercer); Jean Genet: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Genet

**Those who have unintentionally locked themselves within a sleeping bag at a camping goods store (Psych, Gus/Shawn)**

“I’d say I can’t believe you did this but that would be a lie, Shawn.”

The stakeout had not gone exactly as planned. Shawn and Gus had set up inside a tent in the Ripley’s camping store to see if they could catch whoever had stolen the tent pick used in the murder. But then they’d run out of fake s’mores and it had gotten a little chilly and then the sleeping bag had stuck.

“I can’t be held responsible for shoddy workmanship, Gus. This sleeping bag was rated at Arctic levels. Just think how glad Mr. Ripley will be that we discovered the fault now instead of when some poor schmuck was camping in the Arctic Circle.”

He shifted around to get to the flashlight.

“Ow, stop poking me Shawn!”

“That’s not what you said last night.”

Shawn couldn’t tell in the dark but his finely honed Gus-ometer told him that that last fidget had been from arousal, not sharp elbows.

“Hey, you wanna huddle for warmth?”

One thing led to another and though they got a little distracted, they still caught the clerk who had lifted the tent picks. Plus, Mr. Ripley, in gratitude gifted them with the camping equipment so they didn’t have to wash the sleeping bag after and they could build a fort in the Psych offices.

**Any woman whose i.u.d. has set off an alarm system at the airport (V, gen)**

The alarms went off as she stepped through the scanner at airport security and Visitor security immediately descended upon her. Erica kept her hands out at her sides and made her face reflect confusion and alarm as they took her off for private screening. These days it was not just the full pat down and the backscatter machine but the Vistors’ specially enhanced devices (how the politicians had triumphantly announced the end of domestic terrorism, eliding the lack of civil liberties at home). Erica didn’t twitch as they full-body scanned her and came upon the small speck in her uterus, feigned mortification and chagrin as she explained how she had elected to keep her old-style IUD rather than go to the Visitor clinics (pretended a shame-facedness she did not feel at her recalcitrance about letting anyone mess with anyone so private, much less new-fangled alien technology). The human masks of the Visitors reflected condescension and faint contempt for the hundreds of backward humans they must see every day who for their own superstitious reasons clung to their old ways, their outdated privacies. As she had counted on, they let her go through after only a cursory background check, barely pinging her false identity. Erika strolled onto the plane, with the necessary information secure at the heart of her, a seed of revolution waiting to be born.

**Those who, after a swim, find the sensation of water dribbling out of their ears erotic (AtLA, Katara/Zuko, enemas)**

Zuko remembered swimming on Ember Island, some of the few happy memories he had of his childhood. Water had never been his element but there was something special about coming out of the ocean, ears stopped up. It was the the sloshing disorientation and disequilibrium, thrown off balance as he usually never enjoyed but nothing malicious in it like the continual barbs thrown his way by Azula. It was the muffled stillness of the world, muted like underwater even though you were in the air and peaceful for once; he could hear his breath. But most of all, it was the sudden breaking of the seal and that dribbling rush of water warm from his body and blood and the sudden in-rush of sound and life. But that was nothing to the feel of this--Katara, inexorable as the ocean, pushing water up inside his ass, more and more until he felt close to bursting, but for her he could hold it. To avoid her scorn, her disappointment, to let her know that he could take anything, he could hold it in no matter how she directed the water’s flow. And then when he felt himself trembling with it, the need and the shame and the lack of control, then she would force it out of him, the water rushing out of his ass like the sob escaping his throat, leaving him washed clean, emptied, relieved.

**Men who have never touched a whippet (Dead Zone, Johnny/Bruce)**

He’d never touched a whippet before so it was a little bit of a shock to find they had histories and memories like any person or object he’d ever touched (though it shouldn’t have been). He got impressions of forests of legs and Givers of Treats, the crunch of rawhide bone, the joy of bounding along unchained, the rich smells and markers that lived in nooks and crannies and the base of trees and the join of crotch and ass. He got the startlement of wind-whipped leaves and the protectiveness of patrolling borders. Most of all, he got the blast of pure love and devotion felt when looking at his new person--the one who fed him and took care of him and made home safe and warm and loving.

“Johnny, hey man, you OK?” Bruce shook him gently and Johnny looked up into that kind face and felt the same animal joy.  
 **  
Women who gave up the accordion because of pinched breasts (Tipping the Velvet, Nan/Kitty)**

They’d tried working the accordion into the act but abandoned it, even though Nan was a fair hand at it from nights spent around the fire at the oyster house. It wasn’t so much the difficulty of learning new tunes to play as the way the squeezebox had compressed Nan’s already flattened chest. Nan complained of it until Kitty had dropped the idea. What she didn’t tell her was that the pinching of the vanes, the steady rhythmic scratching motion, made Nan’s nipples hard and her knickers wet and made it too difficult to concentrate on the act and not on the moment when they got off stage and back to their rooms and Kitty could soothe the ache away with her tongue.

**Those who have pissed out of the back of moving trucks (Motorcycle Diaries, gen/bob)**

There was something freeing about peeing out of the back of a truck in front of Alberto and God and all his fellow people. His mother would have been horrified but Ernesto had never felt so alive. The ground rolled away underneath them; they had been lucky enough to catch a ride with a group of migrants heading up the coast. This trip had taught him not to take transportation, food, shelter or the simple kindness of people for granted. The sky spread out above them, blue, cloudless, stretching to the horizon in seemingly limitless vistas. He shook, tucked and zipped with no spills (veteran with truck legs, he was now), and dropped back down beside Alberto and huddled close, wind whipping him a bit less now tucked in the lee of the truck’s side and Alberto’s bulk. He didn’t know how long their journey would take but he didn’t care. All the rest of medical school and exams, all of it shrunk compared to Alberto beside him and the people riding with them, their faces weathered and lined with more experience of the world than he had ever seen. The next adventure lay on the horizon and his future and his land stretched out before him, unknown.

**Those who have woken to find the wet footprints of a peacock across their kitchen floor  
(Red Cliff,  Zhuge Liang/Zhao Yu UST)**

Zhuge Liang woke from a dream of wet peacock footprints on his kitchen floor. In the dream, he knew that that the tracks of the peacock came from the tears he had shed, that his heart would fly to Zhao Yu if it could, but it was not meant to be. They would be separate, as Liu Lanzhi and Jiao Zhongqing had been kept apart.(1) He woke with a voiceless cry on his lips and lay still for a moment. But nothing would stop the march of the day; there were campaigns to plan, inventions to engineer. Time would not stop for him. He took up his fan after dressing, only imagining for a moment the crane feathers were more colorful, that he heard the sound of music.

(1) http://history.cultural-china.com/en/60History522.html

 **Anyone whose knees have been ruined as a result of performing sexual acts in elevators (Last Night, Craig/OCs, oral** )

Craig blamed too many rotations of “Love in an Elevator” for number 26 on his list. His knees had about given out and his jaws were on fire after giving head to about 20 people in a row but what a way for them to go.

**Those who have so much as contemplated the possibility of creeping up to one’s enemy with two Bic lighters, pressing simultaneously the butane switches— one into each nostril— and so gassing him to death (The Middleman, gen)**

Wendy was almost in position. The Zzzithraz was still busy monologuing at the boss; judging by the usual time these things took it was just about at “sheer elegance in its simplicity.” She leaped out and hooked her arms around its neck (ignoring the slime was second nature now) and flicked both Bic directly under what she hoped was its nose as it drew in a breath to begin the maniacal laugh (TM). Ten seconds later, she picked herself out of the pool (and chunks, ew) of slime that was all that was left of the Zzzithraz after it blew up.

The boss, of course, was pristine, having thrown himself behind the retaining column just as Wendy struck. He brushed imaginary slime off his Middle uniform anyway as he came forward to give her a hand up.

“Good work, Dubby. You’d think a methane-based species would be a little more careful about blocking all holes in its environmental suit. Sure, a Zzzithraz has got to go when it’s got to go but that’s no excuse for carelessness or letting everything hang out in the breeze like that where a stray flame could catch it.”

Wendy fruitlessly tried to get excess slime (and really, wasn’t any slime excess?) out of her hair. “You mean that wasn’t its nose?”

“No, Dubby, the Zzzithraz have a digestive system in opposition to human ones and--”

Wendy held up a hand. “Stop. I don’t want to know and I think we’re one head up its ass joke away from TMI.”

**Literary critics who have swum the Hellespont, Star Trek Voyager, The Doctor gen (set post-Darkling)**

Lord Byron had swum the Hellespont (modern day designation: the Dardanelles, his data bank supplied) but how much harder was it for an EMH to bridge the gap between human and machine? Byron, or at least the representation of him, had said, "Free of passion? One might as well be free of humanity." The experiment with the behavioral modifications had gone wrong, though. Perhaps being machine was enough, if this was the result.

**Anyone who has been hired as a 'professional beater' and frightened grouse in the direction of the Queen Mother (Sherlock Holmes, Holmes/Watson)**

Holmes was sure that the assassin was somewhere in the Queen’s hunting party, but there remained the matter of how to flush him out. Sitting astride his hunter, Watson looked at the hawk-nosed profile of one of the beaters-grubby and wearing homespun--and reflected that only Sherlock would have taken the metaphor so literally. Looking at that well-loved figure, recognizable to him now almost anywhere and in any disguise, John felt his heart leap and take wing like the grouse heading toward them. Sherlock would always get his quarry.

**Any lover who has gone into a flower shop on Valentine's Day and asked for clitoris when he meant clematis (White Collar, Peter/Neal/El)**

The trouble began when Neal found out Peter hadn’t yet gotten Elizabeth’s flowers for Valentine’s Day. Minutes later, Peter found himself out of the Bureau and in the long line at Manhattan’s most exclusive florist shop.

“You are not just getting Elizabeth roses from that bodega on the corner on top of chocolate and jewelry that’s far too cheap for her.”

“No! I’ve got more than that.” Peter fidgeted, irritated. “And that jewelry is not too cheap, Mr. ‘I pulled the Museon Museum heist.’”

“There was never anything tying anyone least of all me to that, and yes it is. But if I had taken those diamonds, she would deserve every one of them. And tickets to the opera don’t count. She knows you’ll hate it and I’ll end up taking her.”

Peter went on the offensive since he found that was about the only way to keep Neal in check. “And what did you get her? That’s not illegal.”

Neal slanted him a glance. “I made her a reproduction of Girl withe Pearl Earring.” It was El’s favorite painting. “And I signed it. For real! All above board.” Neal put on his wide-eyed innocent look and then edged closer to Peter to whisper under the ringing cash register, his glance going decidedly smoky. “And I thought we could give her our real present when we got home.”

Peter swallowed; it was practically Pavlovian now when Neal leaned in and used that tone. Neal spent the next five minuted detailing exactly how happy a woman he and Peter would make her so it was all his fault when Peter got to the counter and made the Freudian slip.

**Anyone who has consumed a dog’s heart pills during seasons of passion (When Night Is Falling, Camille/Petra)**

Camille felt as if her heart would give out, it was beating so. Nothing she did slowed its beat, the pounding in her blood, between her legs. In desperation, she even swallowed some of Bob’s medicine (certainly the poor thing would not be needing it anymore) but not even that could contain the animal beating of her heart. She fancied she could hear it in her ears, the lub dub chanting of one name: Pet-ra, Pet-ra, Pet-ra.

**Those who have come across their own telephone numbers underneath terse insults or compliments in the washroom of the Bay Street Bus Terminal (Doctor Who/Torchwood, Jack Harkness/everyone)**

Jack Harkness was the only person Ianto knew who would not only leave his number on the walls of bathroom stalls in the bus terminal as advertisements but also would reply back to the (usually glowing) commentary on his performance. Jack did believe in replying to positive feedback.

**Those who have used the following techniques of seduction:  
-small talk at a falconry convention  
-entering a spa town disguised as Ford Madox Ford  
-making erotic rotations of the pelvis, backstage, during the storm scene of King Lear  
-underlining suggestive phrases in the prefaces of Joseph Conrad  
(Doctor Who/Torchwood, **  
**Jack Harkness/everyone**  
 **)**

Four pickup lines that Jack Harkness used and one he didn’t

“So have you ever seen an actual chickenhawk?”

“This may not be the saddest story ever told, but I sure can make it racy.”

“I’d be as happy being sinned against as sinning” (with bonus hip roll)

“As a matter of preference, I will have no favourites (2). . .but I think i can make an exception for you.”

“If I told you you had a beautiful body, would you hold it against me?”

(2) http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/c/conrad/joseph/c75l/preface.html

**Anyone who has testified as a character witness for a dog in a court of law (Sarah Jane Adventures, gen)**

"I swear, Your Honor, he's not usually like this. He's usually a good dog; there are extenuating circumstances."

Trying to plead a judge for clemency for her robot dog was not the weirdest thing Sarah Jane had done by far but she hadn’t expected it to make her feel as embarrassed as it did.

“You see, he has this warning system and he’d just been, uh, rebuilt, and he honestly thought that your slime was explosive so he was primed to fire his lasers. He didn’t know, and neither did I, that heat application is considered the first step in Melakian marriage proposals. He can’t marry anyone, Judge. He’s practically a baby!”  
 **  
Any writer who has been photographed for the jacket of a book in one of the following poses: sitting in the back of a 1956 Dodge with two roosters; in a tuxedo with the Sydney Opera House in the distance; studying the vanishing point on a jar of Dutch Cleanser; against a gravestone with dramatic back lighting; with a false nose on; in the vicinity of Macchu Pichu; or sitting in a study and looking intensely at one's own book (Bloomsbury Group RPF (EM Forster), gen)**

Of all the book jacket photos he had taken, only the one of him staring at his own book had ever been published. The rest had been taken mostly for the amusement of the Memoir Club (if he never heard a joke about two cocks again after the photo in the Dodge, it would be too soon).

**The person who borrowed my Martin Beck thriller, read it in a sauna which melted the glue off the spine so the pages drifted to the floor, stapled them together and returned the book, thinking I wouldn’t notice (Black Books, Bernard/Manny/Fran)**

Bernard would have made Manny and Fran pay for the destruction of his latest book (he hadn’t even gotten to finish it before one of them had spirited it off and returned it, a shell of its former self) but generous applications of tequila and two blowjobs later, he’d mellowed to occasional grumbling around a post-coital cigarette.

 **Any person who has burst into tears at the Liquor Control Board (Hiromi Goto-The Kappa Child, gen/bob,** allusions to abuse **)**

I had never cried in front of him or for anything bit since the unpregnancy I’d found myself crying more than I ever had before. And now here I was in tears in the Liquor Control Board outlet. It was the sight of the vodka that had set me off. It was Okasan’s favorite for her martinis. I don’t know what it was--the thought that maybe now she didn’t need the drinks to wall her off from things, that she was sipping them with Janice after a long day collecting the stories of other immigrant women who had been suddenly transported to strange new worlds. I had finally heard from her a month ago. They were in Arizona, staying with a healer in Sedona and collecting stories of milagros. Okasan had breathed into the phone for a moment like Mice used to do before. “I’m sorry,” she had said in Japanese. “You did the best you could,” I said. And then I had told her about Bernie and Genvieve and Midori and she had told me about Janice and the adventures that had as they traveled south. And it was OK; it was what it was. So there was no real reason I should be standing int he Liquor Control, suddenly feeling tears welling up. But maybe there was every reason. I let them slip over, the taste sweet on my lips. Bernie came up and slipped a hand in mine, hugged me around my thick waist and just said, “Hey, you all right?” I nodded and swiped them away, feeling the answering press against my cheeks from the inside and the curl around my heart, a sudden lightness. Yeah, yeah I was. Bernie tucked me into her side and we went up front to join Genevieve and Midori, a bottle of triple-distilled vodka made from the sweetest spring water under my arm.

**Anyone with pain (Doctor Who, SPN, Mercedes Lackey, AtLA; gen, referernce to character death, suicide)**

I seem to remember someone has done something like this before but I can’t remember so apologies if I’m biting anybody’s style.

Manpain haiku (boo hoo)

Last Time Lord, alone,  
save Companions who don’t  
count, being mortal.

Abused, unloved, left  
by suicidal love, even  
soulbonded horse pales.

Scarr-ed fire child cries  
in rain “My honor!” but no  
one takes him seriously.

Mom dead on ceiling,  
family divided, demons,  
deals, hell. Single tear.  



End file.
